Getting down to the business of street theater / Financial District dance inspires shrugs, leers

James Sullivan, Chronicle Pop Culture Critic

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, December 14, 2002

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BRANT WARD Caption OLYMPIA1-12DEC02-DD-BW--Performance artist Olympia does her "Fille Publique" near the corner of Sutter and Montgomery Streets in San Francisco. By Brant Ward/Chronicle

BRANT WARD Caption OLYMPIA1-12DEC02-DD-BW--Performance artist Olympia does her "Fille Publique" near the corner of Sutter and Montgomery Streets in San Francisco. By Brant Ward/Chronicle

Getting down to the business of street theater / Financial District dance inspires shrugs, leers

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It's always the economy, stupid. Except when there's a hint of sex to distract them.

At precisely 1 p.m. Thursday, a woman dressed for business strolled up to a signpost in San Francisco's Financial District. She leaned her leather portfolio against a fire hydrant and, stone-faced, began twirling around the pole.

The hourlong performance was intended as street theater, a gently surreal critique of Western consumer culture. It had to do with the commodification of stocks and bonds, art and the female body, explained the artist when she was finished.

"Olympia" performed her act without benefit of an announcement, a proclamation or a manifesto of any kind. She just performed. Afterward, she silently offered for sale a few Polaroids taken by an accomplice. Then she disappeared into the foot traffic.

She wore a black skirt, a houndstooth jacket, black and white driving gloves, and a blank expression. Situated directly beneath the Charles Schwab marquee that displays the stock market figures, she spun, dipped, did deliberate knee bends and occasionally kicked both feet off the ground, gripping the post.

As she danced, lunchtime passers-by corkscrewed their faces, trying to puzzle it out. Was she a fashion model on a photo shoot? Was she going to strip? Was a man with a big butterfly net going to jump out of an ambulance?

"Is that allowed?" asked Andre, an employee in the Schwab building that rose overhead. Moments later a police officer

rolled by in stop-and-go traffic. He peered out his windshield, shook his head in dismay and sped through the intersection.

Small clusters of men gathered on the corner for a few minutes at a time, then dispersed. "Is this a peep show?" asked a grinning guy in a trench coat.

"Maybe she needs the exercise," suggested another.

Women seemed less interested. "I've seen that a couple of times," said one to a friend, walking past. "I'm always, like, 'Whatever!' "

Olympia claims to be part of the L7 Project, an underground group of performance artists who have been staging "interventions" in recent days in the Financial District. Their events are timed to coincide with the holiday shopping season, when all good Americans are expected to do their bit for the economy.

At least one or two people were inspired to propose transactions. Stopped at the light, a man leaned out of the passenger's window of an enormous SUV and asked the dancer whether she would like to go for a ride. Her expression was as plain as the sign's message -- No Stopping Any Time.

A security guard in a blue blazer came out of a nearby office building to have a look. He stood alongside a janitor holding a broom, and they both chuckled.

"No harm, no crime," said the guard, shrugging. "I've been here 10 years. I got some stories." This one, he said, ranked right up there.

When Olympia was finished, she sold a snapshot to a woman who said she works for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and makes a hobby of buying street art. The buyer hadn't seen the performance, she said, but she could tell by the pictures that Olympia's "presentation was very polished."

Despite the oddity of the act, hundreds of people didn't notice, or pretended not to. At one point a guy waiting at the red light stuck a purple hand puppet out of his sunroof and waved to the pedestrians. He got one of the loudest receptions of the afternoon.

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